Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She Goes\A Promise for the Baby\That Summer at the Shore (26 page)

“Coming from a nurse like you, that's high praise, indeed.” Returning her smile, he pulled off his white lab coat and draped it over the desk.

A blush heated her cheeks. She quickly turned away. Now wasn't the time to let her growing attraction for this man get in the way. They worked well together. That was all. She shouldn't read anything into his friendliness. Every unmarried nurse in the hospital, and half of the married ones, had a crush on the handsome resident who worked weekends in their small town. She didn't intend to add herself to the list.

He glanced at the clock. “Does your husband mind you working late? Or is he used to it?”

“She isn't married,” Jane piped up. Robyn shot her a quick frown, but Jane only grinned and winked. A newlywed herself, Jane made no secret of the fact she thought Robyn should be dating again.

“You're not married?” His tone was puzzled. He glanced at her hand. “You wear a ring.”

“My husband passed away four years ago,” Robyn said quietly.

“I'm sorry.” His voice held true compassion. She liked that about him.

“Thank you.” Even after so many years, she still found it difficult to talk about Colin.

She quickly moved the conversation back to the task at hand. “I'll check the IV supplies and make sure we have everything. Jane, you get started on the paperwork.”

When the ambulance backed up to the doors, they were ready and waiting for it.

“What do we have, gentlemen?” Dr. Cain grabbed the foot of the gurney. He guided it inside the doors and into the nearest room. Thick, blood-soaked bandages covered most of the patient's face. A wide foam-and-plastic collar held his head and neck immobile. The front of his blue-and-white-striped shirt was covered with blood—a lot of blood. Robyn grasped his wrist to check his pulse.

The paramedic held an IV bag high in one hand. “White male, early thirties. He took a horn to the face. He has severe lacerations to the left cheek and eye. Looks bad for his eye, Doc. He was trampled, too. Labored breathing, concave left lower chest, no breath sounds on that side.”

“Fractured ribs, probably a punctured lung. Stupidest sport ever invented.” Dr. Cain snatched his stethoscope from around his neck, pulled back the patient's shirt and listened.

Looping his stethoscope over his neck again, he said tersely, “Jane, get me a chest-tube tray. Crank up his oxygen to 15 liters. Let me hear some vital signs, people.”

Robyn was already gathering the information he wanted. She used the blood-pressure cuff the ambulance crew had wrapped around his arm. She took a reading and said, “BP is ninety over fifty. Pulse ninety, weak and thready, respiration's thirty-eight and labored.”

Dr. Cain peeled back the dressings on the man's face and frowned. “You're right. I doubt we can save his eye. Keep a moist sterile dressing on this. We'll let the surgeons in Kansas City sort it out.”

Jane wheeled a metal stand up beside them and pulled the wrappings off a sterile pack. “Here's the chest-tube tray.”

“We need X-rays of his skull, neck, chest and abdomen.” Dr. Cain snapped out orders. “Get lab and X-ray in here now! I want a blood gas, a complete blood count and I want him typed and cross matched for a blood transfusion. Do we have a name?”

The two paramedics didn't answer. Robyn raised the phone to her ear and punched in the number for X-ray, but she felt the men's gazes on her. She turned toward them.

“It's Neal Bryant,” one of them said.

The room grew dark at the edges of Robyn's vision and seemed to tilt. The phone fell from her nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor. She groped behind her for the wall.

Dear God, it can't be!
She stared at the still, blood-soaked figure in stunned disbelief.

“Robyn? Robyn, who is he to you?” Dr. Cain's voice seemed to come from a long way away.

“Nobody,” she whispered, wishing it were true.

“They were engaged once,” Jane said, then picked up the phone and spoke quickly. “Portable X-ray in E.R., stat.”

For a long, painful moment, Robyn's heart seemed to freeze. Then it began to pound wildly inside her chest. She couldn't get enough air. She drew in one deep breath, then another, and slowly her vision began to clear. “It was a long time ago.”

“Well, he's going to be a dead nobody if we don't get this chest tube in. Help or get out of the way.” Dr. Cain's voice was harsh as he began to swab Neal's chest with antiseptic.

“What?” She looked at him in confusion.

“You heard me. Help, or get out of here. I need a nurse, not a jilted sweetheart. Someone start another IV line, and get this shirt out of my way.”

“Of course, I'm sorry.” Robyn picked up a pair of scissors. Her hands trembled, but she managed to cut away the bloody fabric from Neal's chest.

Neal flinched and moaned when the chest tube went in, and she grabbed the hand he raised. “Neal, can you hear me? You're in the hospital. You're going to be okay.”

God she hoped that was true. His hand tightened on hers, and he tried to speak. She bent close to hear his voice, which was muffled by the oxygen mask. “Robyn?”

“Yes, Neal, it's me. You're going to be okay.”

His grip tightened. “I'm sorry,” he rasped. “Want you...to know...” His voice trailed away, and his hand fell limp.

“How soon on that Air-Life flight?” Dr. Cain's question spurred her back into action. She wrapped a tourniquet around Neal's muscular forearm and began to prep for another IV line.

“Twenty minutes,” Jane said.

“Type and cross for two units. We've got a lot of blood coming out of this chest tube. Get a unit of O neg. in as fast as you can. Do you have that IV yet?”

“Yes.” Robyn slid the needle into place and taped it.

“Start Ringer's lactate wide-open, and Robyn?”

“Yes?”

“Good job.”

She nodded. “I'd better notify his family.”

“Let Jane do it. I need you.” He held out a gloved hand and said, “Suture.”

Somehow Robyn managed to keep working, but she couldn't stop glancing at the clock. Time seemed to move in slow motion. Where was the transport crew? How much longer before they arrived? She listened to each rattling breath Neal took and prayed he would keep breathing. The nurse in her kept functioning, snipping sutures, checking vital signs, starting blood, while another part of her watched the whole scene with a sense of disbelief.

It was the nightmare scene she had always feared when they were together.

She wasn't surprised Neal had been seriously injured. He was a world-class bull rider. He risked injury, even death, a hundred times each year. That was part of the reason she'd walked away from him five years ago. A small part.

What did surprise her was how much she still cared.

At last the outside doors slid open and the transport crew rushed in. Dressed in blue-and-white jumpsuits and carrying large red-and-white cases, they set up on the scene with practiced ease. It was a relief to step out of the way and let them take over. Within minutes, Neal had been assessed and was loaded onto their stretcher. He was quickly wheeled out the door, across the parking lot and up to the waiting helicopter.

Neal's mother's white Buick Regal tore into the lot as he was being lifted aboard. Ellie Bryant jumped out of her car and raced toward the chopper. The crew let her in beside him as Dr. Cain and Robyn hurried toward her. Leaning in the chopper, Ellie spoke to her son and kissed him before the crew urged her aside.

Robyn took Ellie by the shoulders and pulled her away. Covering their faces with their arms, the two women huddled together as the chopper rose into the air and clung to each other until the sound of it faded away.

Ellie used both hands to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “I've always been afraid of this. At least he was close to home and not a thousand miles away.”

Turning to Robyn, she asked, “Will he live?”

“He's getting the best care possible, but it is bad.”

Dr. Cain came up and rested a hand on Ellie's shoulder as he spoke. “Do you have someone who can drive you to Kansas City tonight? I think you should go as quickly as possible.”

“My oldest son and his wife are in Dallas. I'm fine to go by myself.”

“I'll go with you,” Robyn surprised herself by offering.

“Are you sure?” Ellie asked.

“Yes, I'm sure. You shouldn't drive all that way alone. Let me call Mom and make some arrangements for Chance.”

Robyn rushed back inside to make the call. She couldn't rest until she knew that Neal would live. If he didn't, she'd never have the chance to tell him he had a son.

Copyright © 2014 by Patricia MacDonald

ISBN-13: 9781460324523

EVERYWHERE SHE GOES

Copyright © 2014 by Janice Kay Johnson

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He
always
does the right thing

There's one exception to Karl Milek's rule—the Vegas weekend that leaves him with a night to remember, and a beautiful new wife he'd rather forget. Those divorce papers are put on hold, however, when Vivian shows up on his doorstep pregnant.

Karl offers her shelter and everything else she needs until their baby is born. Yet soon he realizes that he could definitely get used to seeing Vivian in the mornings, sharing dinner with her at night…and inhaling her jasmine scent. But he doesn't think he can risk giving his wife the one thing she wants most—his love.

This was exactly what he wanted to avoid!

When Karl walked through the doorway to his apartment at eleven o'clock on Friday, he found Vivian sitting on a dining chair in the entryway, reading
What To Expect When You're Expecting.
He should have known it had been too much to hope that he could dodge her for eight months.

“Good evening, Karl.” She rested the book on her lap and looked up at him. “Have you been avoiding me?”

It sounded cowardly when she put it like that. He stared at the curve of her bottom lip over her pointed chin. soft over sharp, and he had to stop himself from running his thumb over the bow. He didn't have to be drunk to be susceptible to the arcs of her face, but he needed to remember that she was only temporary. The baby was permanent, but Vivian was fleeting.

“I work a lot.” It came out like a defense.

“Well, you're home now and I'm still up, so we can finally talk.”

Dear Reader,

Jo Beverley has a post on the blog
Word Wenches
where she talks about the marriage-of-convenience trope, calling it “vows before love.” This trope appeals to Beverley because the vulnerability of the heroine required for the story shows her strengths to the fullest effect. (Beverley compares this to a thriller where the hero starts out trapped.) To me, this is Vivian in a nutshell. When the book opens, there is little more in her life she can lose, and we see her battle her fears, weakness and, occasionally, her husband to become a fuller, stronger person.

Karl has a different journey to take. If you've read the other two books in the Milek series (
Reservations for Two,
February 2013, and
The First Move,
April 2013), then you know Karl is a bit uptight and a serial dater. Finding the perfect match for him was hard; my laptop is full of first chapters where Karl meets a heroine who is great—but not for him. It took me several tries before I realized Karl needs someone to challenge his preconceived notions about himself and the world, without shaking him loose from his core. Love stories work best when we have to push ourselves to be worthy of our beloved.

If you're interested in Vivian's background and family in the novel, I recommend Iris Chang's
The Chinese in America: A Narrative History.

Enjoy!
Jennifer Lohmann